I'll Be There by Iris Rainer Dart

gentle hug, until Cee Cee pulled away to listen to the music she heard floating up from downstairs in the music room. Nina had put one of Cee Cee’s albums on the turntable there and was listening to it.
     
    Nights are long since you went away I dream about you all through the day My buddy, my buddy
    Nobody quite so true.
     
    Hal, who had played backup piano on the recording session of that album, listened a little mistily to the music, then nodded remembering. “That was the first cut,” he reminded Cee Cee.
    “Yeah,” Cee Cee said, sighing. “And it’s always the deepest.” Then she put her arm around Hal, and the two of them walked downstairs to be with Nina, listening to the song as it rose.
    Miss your voice, the touch of your hand Just long to know that you understand My buddy, my buddy
    Your buddy misses you.
     
    I’LL BE THERE

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    ANDREWS, KROLL, SCHULTZ AND STEIN
     
    Dear Cee Cee,
     
    Per our recent telephone conversation, I reiterate how sorry I was to hear of the death of your friend Roberta Barron. Although I never met her, you told me more than once how important her friendship was to you. Regarding your role as guardian of her minor child, I am enclosing the following forms: a petition for your appointment as guardian of the person of Nina Barron and a waiver of notice and consent. Per Mrs. Barron’s attorney in Sarasota, I will also forward copies of the waiver to Roberta Barron’s aunt Anita Bennet in Miami Beach, Florida, and the child’s natural father, Michael Barron in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
     
    The petition will be filed with the State of California and a date for a hearing will be set for sometime within the next six months depending on how much independent investigation the court wishes to make before appointing a guardian. Despite what you told me on the phone about the ominous words from Mrs. Barron’s representatives, rest assured that the court will give great weight to Mrs. Barron’s nomination.
     
    Because the firm of Barmen and Wolk in Florida has been appointed as guardian to the estate, and the child’s natural father has shown no interest in Nina since birth, and the aunt is elderly and I gather relieved to be rescued from the responsibility, I foresee no problems in closing this matter swiftly.
     
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    IRIS RAINER DART
     
    Aain, please accept my deepest sympathies for your loss, and if you have any questions reardin these documents please feel free to call.
     
    Sincerely,
     
    Jim Andrews
     
    I’LL BE THERE

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    Dear Cee Cee,
    I got the waiver yesterday from the California court, and I signed it because I know that’s what my niece said she wanted. Personally I worry about the welfare of a child who is living in that kind of environment where there are so many terrible types. (No offense meant towards you, but you know how most people in your line of work behave. Like that Cher and others I don’t have to mention.) I have also put in the envelope a copy of something which I went over to the library to the copy machine to make for you. It’s a letter which was sent to me by my niece, a few months before she died. You can tell by what she says in it that it was sent during the time when she still intended to give Nina to me instead of to you. I came across it last night and thought that maybe you should have it because of what it says. The handwriting in it is so poor and childlike that she must have already been very ill when she sent it off, and I’m pretty sure she wasn’t really in her right mind at the end. Now and then I get a letter from Nina. If you could make her write to me more often, it would cheer me and my husband quite a bit.
     
    Sincerely,
     
    Anita Bennet
     
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    IRIS RAINER DART
     
    Dear Aunt Neet,
    I have begun this letter to you again and again over the last few weeks, each time destroying the draft halfway through, probably to deny that eventually I would have to finish and send it, since my intention herein is to outline some